I think I just found my Christmas vacation read. This should inform the first phase of my Canadian exploration: Canadian cuisine.
From the introduction:
"It seems like everyone I know wants to be an expert on donuts. Everyone has a cousin or father with some insight, some theory, or some rant about the important place of the donut in Canadian life. In many places across Canada the donut is believed to be the unofficial national food, celebrated in song and story as a sort of ironic replacement for the dramatic national symbols found south of the 49th parallel."
Apparently Canadians really love Doughnuts. According to Wikipedia, they consume the most doughnuts per capita of any nation in the world. Beating out America at eating oily mounds of fat isn't some small feat, either.
Apparently the doughnut is enough of a national image it can be used to make urgent environmental pleas. Go figure.
When I was a kid my family took a road trip to the Canadian Rockies. When we got to the border in Northern Idaho, we realized that we'd forgotten to bring the envelope with all of our Passports. My parents and brother were able, of course, to get in with their drivers licenses. Because I wasn't 15 yet, however, I didn't have one. I didn't have any kind of ID, actually. The border patrol officer held us for quite awhile, lecturing me and my parents for being so irresponsible. I don't remember that much of the conversation, but I do remember him, after deciding to let us through, telling/asking us, "Canada is a foreign country, so you need a passport to get in. Would you take a trip to France without your passport?"
It's funny - but we really didn't think of Canada in the same way we thought of France. After all, we traveled far more regularly to Canada than other American states. At that point in my life, I'd never been anywhere in the American East, the Southwest, or much of the Midwest.
I'd like to think that this attitude changed as I grew older, however, I'm not sure it did. When I was 19 I took a bus from Seattle, WA to Vancouver, BC. After using my bankcard to buy a metro ticket, it stopped working. I'd not informed my bank that I was traveling to Canada, so there was an automatic freeze put on the account. During the year prior to that trip, I'd traveled regularly between Boston, Seattle, Wichita, and Atlanta. Never during any of these trips had I run into problems with my bank. So, I didn't foresee anything out of the ordinary in my 150 mile trip north. I didn't think of Canada as a foreign country; it was like the 51st state.
It is with this mindset that I set out to explore Canada. Not by moving there - as would be noble, romantic - but by researching the country and its people. Hopefully this blog will help me overcome my ignorance of our Northern neighbors.
I'll start with a video that I think appropriately conveys my point. Note how the video, without the minor, specific differences (mounted police, Canadian flag, skylines, Canadian military uniforms, national anthem) might as well be a video collage of America. There's even a shot of a bald eagle. Stands to reason that we share much of the same wildlife, natural imagery. What this video might highlight, however, is the priorities given to different national symbols. The man fishing in the canoe, for example, might not come to the forefront of an video collage by PBS.
